1. Field of the Invention
The disclosure is directed generally to a system and method for healthcare data management and, more particularly to, managing healthcare data in a healthcare data network (HDN) using a data management agent (MDA).
2. Description of the Related Art
Healthcare firms are constantly seeking to reduce costs, streamline operations and improve patient care as the industry continues to deal with a challenging and constantly evolving business environment. In addition, the regulatory requirements of the U.S. Government HIPAA statutes are driving significant and long-term changes to the IT infrastructure for carrying out administrative tasks and patient care. For these reasons, the healthcare industry is looking to automation to play a major role in controlling costs and improving operations.
The healthcare industry's typical IT infrastructure is a complex assembly of packaged administrative applications together with packaged and custom healthcare-specific applications. While manual and paper processes have been gradually automated, the volume of data that hospitals and healthcare networks must manage and process has been growing at an exponential rate. Because healthcare IT systems support crucial clinical operations and current data must be available at all times, always on, zero-latency healthcare management and synchronization applications are becoming increasingly important.